Why are energy efficiency standards so far behind the technology?

ChrisJ · February 2016

You know what we should focus all of our efforts on?

Where's my MR FUSION???

BobC · February 2016

Fusion will be the answer to most of our problems regarding electricity when we figure it out - I don't see it happening for 30+ years but hope I'm wrong.

Until then we can get efficient and clean nuclear power in 10 years if we have the will to start building generation 4 nuclear designed plants now.

Bob

ratio · February 2016

<sigh>

While there is a place in the world for government regulations, I'm hard-pressed to think of circumstances promoting the adoption of regulations that the express intent of which is nothing other than increasing my cost.

New regulations on something as poorly understood by the average homeowner (or politician) will undoubtedly be at best ineffectual, likely counterproductive in some not-uncommon circumstances, and most certainly gamed.

And of course the problem will not be fixed by better efficiency regulations, even in the dubious circumstances of correct, effectual implementation.

The problem is too much use, the only solution is to use less. Arguing for anything else is merely concealing the problem, and suffers from the same critical flaw as all the other current "solutions", namely pushing the problem down stream, to be dealt with at a later date.

Dave0176 · February 2016

The majority of steam owners who actually take care of there stuff, regularly clean it, will get 35-40 years of service and replace possibly a couple thermo couplers, a $6 item or now a spark ignitor, this being done for higher efficiency, and they do fail.

Even conventional cast iron hot water boilers go 40-50 years with 0 maintinence other then the usual thermo coupler or circulator replacement. Try neglecting a mod/con....!!!!!

As steamhead already stated I have the parts on my truck to repair any of these heating units, I don't have any for the high efficiency stuff.

I don't really install much high efficiency stuff unless the customer REALLY wants it.

ChrisJ · February 2016

AJinCT said:
ratio, for homeowners who are making good choices with HVAC equipment, stricter efficiency standards would mean nothing, as they would already comply with them. For homeowners who are poorly informed, then they would save money with more efficient equipment. The only people who would spend more are landlords, but their tenants would benefit.

Speaking of landlords, don't even get me started on all-electric apartments with resistance baseboard. Utterly ridiculous in this day and age. It wouldn't be hard to plop a Mitsubishi MSHP in each apartment.

Insulation is definitely one way to use less heating energy, and you can try some sort of campaign to get people to stop blasting the heat, and keep thermostats at 65 or less, but even *I* wouldn't want the government reaching in and controlling thermostats (unless it's voluntary like the A/C peak load programs). And beyond that, how do you cut usage? You have to heat with something, whether it's oil/gas or wood or a heat pump.

Dave0176, You make it sound like mod/con boilers are so difficult and some new-fangled tech. They aren't. They've been proven over and over, and unless you live in east Timbuktu or something, there are dealers with the parts for them. There is simply no good reason for CI gas hot water boilers to exist. None. They're big, bulky, awkward, heavy, and worst of all, inefficient. Buderus is the last domain of a good use for a CI boiler, and only on oil.

65F?
I keep our heat at 72F, anything less would never fly with the wife and to be honest, 65 wouldn't fly with me either. 68 or 69 maybe.

You really love heatpumps.
Wonder how long they last? Judging by all other modern refrigeration equipment I'm going to guess not terribly long.

What's the MTBF on a Mitsubishi MSHP?
I'd tell you what it is for a monitor top, but you'd call me a liar.

Steamhead · February 2016

AJinCT said:
Dave0176, You make it sound like mod/con boilers are so difficult and some new-fangled tech. They aren't. They've been proven over and over, and unless you live in east Timbuktu or something, there are dealers with the parts for them. There is simply no good reason for CI gas hot water boilers to exist. None. They're big, bulky, awkward, heavy, and worst of all, inefficient. Buderus is the last domain of a good use for a CI boiler, and only on oil.

There you go again. Since some mod-cons have only lasted five years, are you saying you would want to replace yours every five years? Well, it's a free country, but most of us prefer something that lasts longer. That in itself justifies cast-iron boilers. And we can handle moving them around- sure beats paying for a gym membership.

ChrisJ said:
What's the MTBF on a Mitsubishi MSHP?
I'd tell you what it is for a monitor top, but you'd call me a liar.

That seems to be AJ's standard response to someone who posts something that doesn't match his narrative. Don't forget, he's never actually worked with this equipment.

ChrisJ · February 2016

When it comes to being "green" and actually trying to do the best thing when it comes to the environment I have big concerns about a ton of mini-splits being in a land fill in 10-20 years.

Not to mention we allow (is allow the right word? yeah, we pay them to do it, so I'm going with it) China to make them with zero environmental regulations. Even if they're assembled in Japan or USA I bet 95% of the parts are made in China.

I've seen how many modern compressors, evaporators and condensers are made and I really have a hard time believing they can last as long as a decent boiler and hot water or steam system. A really hard time.

This is also the reason I'm against geothermal, for now. I always keep an open mind and will change my option when presented with different facts.

let's see those MTBF specs!

njtommy · February 2016

Mini splits / VRV systems or modulating compressors are the wave of the future. I don't believe they will ever replace boilers that are steam or hydronic. They are inexpensive to run and make zoning easy. If a home owner has solar panels it's silly not to use heat pumps as the first stage of heating. Sure there comfort level my drop a bit, but I guess that's what you deal with or become accustomed to.

I'm not sure about the whole being green crap. I just do not want not to pay high utility bills so if the math is ther for saving and return on investment is good why not.

ChrisJ · February 2016

njtommy said:
Mini splits / VRV systems or modulating compressors are the wave of the future. I don't believe they will ever replace boilers that are steam or hydronic. They are inexpensive to run and make zoning easy. If a home owner has solar panels it's silly not to use heat pumps as the first stage of heating. Sure there comfort level my drop a bit, but I guess that's what you deal with or become accustomed to.

I'm not sure about the whole being green crap. I just do not want not to pay high utility bills so if the math is ther for saving and return on investment is good why not.

Solar panels.
That's a whole other can of worms right down to the utility companies limiting the amount you can feed back into the grid.

As far as the whole being green crap, that's what this thread was allegedly about.

njtommy · February 2016

I'm not sure how the solar panel thing works with pushing power back to the grid, but I can say they are being installed everywhere and on a good amount of houses. A good buddy of mine just had them install on his house I think it will cost him around 40k or so by the time he pays his system off.

ChrisJ · February 2016

njtommy said:
I'm not sure how the solar panel thing works with pushing power back to the grid, but I can say they are being installed everywhere and on a good amount of houses. A good buddy of mine just had them install on his house I think it will cost him around 40k or so by the time he pays his system off.

From what I understand, they limit you to the amount you typically consume so the panels are intended to cancel out your energy bill. However, you often hear about selling power to the electric company, but they don't want you doing that. You can have a huge roof, but you're only allowed to install enough panels to primarily feed your own stuff.

There's also problems if a panel gets damaged, I believe they all need to be matched so if your panel is no longer made, tough noogies.

This is my understanding of it and it could be skewed.

Also not sure on what the environmental impact of making the panels is. I've heard it's terrible but don't know if I can believe that or not.

KC_Jones · February 2016

njtommy said:
If a home owner has solar panels it's silly not to use heat pumps as the first stage of heating.

This is an excellent point! What drives me nuts about people slamming heat pumps down our throats is it's VERY short sighted. First of all since it runs off of electric you are automatically starting off at roughly 40% efficiency because that's the approximate efficiency of power generation. If you want to talk about energy consumption and efficiency you must look at the whole not just some small portion of it to make your point or support your agenda. Honestly if we want to explore energy efficiency and being green I really feel looking at house design and leveraging passive solar concepts is a much better place to put our efforts....if this is being put squarely on the homeowner. The most energy efficient thing you can do is use none....it's cheap too.

ChrisJ · February 2016

KC_Jones said:

njtommy said:
If a home owner has solar panels it's silly not to use heat pumps as the first stage of heating.
This is an excellent point! What drives me nuts about people slamming heat pumps down our throats is it's VERY short sighted. First of all since it runs off of electric you are automatically starting off at roughly 40% efficiency because that's the approximate efficiency of power generation. If you want to talk about energy consumption and efficiency you must look at the whole not just some small portion of it to make your point or support your agenda. Honestly if we want to explore energy efficiency and being green I really feel looking at house design and leveraging passive solar concepts is a much better place to put our efforts....if this is being put squarely on the homeowner. The most energy efficient thing you can do is use none....it's cheap too.

5.5" of spray foam in walls sounds like a good place to start to me.

njtommy · February 2016

Building a home like that is great and it drives the cost up big time.

Yes we talk to people who are building homes, but I think the majority on this site is existing homes and retro fits or upgrading. So housing design is limited for these home owners.

I believe we should be looking how to make homes more energy efficient and not just selling more energy efficient equipment in leaky homes.

We are behind on energy efficiency items as Americans, because we are Americans lol, but in mind it's hard for people to say you have to install that 90% furnace in a condo. Because in some cases it almost impossible to do so.

SWEI · February 2016

njtommy said:
Building a home like that is great and it drives the cost up big time.

Passive solar design costs approximately nothing over conventional clueless design. The benefits are immense. Additional insulation does add cost, but still very little in the larger scheme of things. Upgrading from fiberglass batts to dense-packed cellulose (or dense-packed fiberglass) is pretty much a no-brainer in most North American climates. Reduced first cost (for smaller HVAC equipment) can offset this in many cases.

The above will generally deliver a better ROI than you can get from any (legal) investment.

Leon82 · February 2016

The electrical solar panels that people get put on for no money out of pocket are with a power purchase agreement.

In my area it starts at .13 kWh and increases 2.9% per year for 20 year contract.

njtommy · February 2016

There is something fishy about those programs if you ask me.

I would never install a roof mount system. Ground mount sure no problem if I had the land to do so. Especially hydronic solar panels.

I'm not willing the to give up my tree coverage in the summer time.

I wasn't really thinking about passive solar. But yeah that makes sense to me. I would imagine that if the house faced south you could install bigger windows (with in reason) and use tile floors to allow more heat gain.

KC_Jones · February 2016

njtommy said:

I wasn't really thinking about passive solar. But yeah that makes sense to me. I would imagine that if the house faced south you could install bigger windows (with in reason) and use tile floors to allow more heat gain.

My father, grandfather and I built something like this back in the early 90's. 24x24 addition on my grandparents house. All open, vaulted ceilings and HUGE windows, slab on grade that was insulated underneath (can't remember how much) with tile on top. 2x6 construction and insulated to the best available at the time. Also had a couple skylights on the most south portion of the roof. He had to put electric baseboard heaters in because of code requirements for heating, but he never turned them on. That room never got truly cold. I think the lowest he saw in 10 years might have been 65 or so. It works if it's laid out correctly. other than super insulating (which should be done no matter what) it doesn't cost anything extra. Concentrating on equipment is a bad distraction in my opinion. Any equipment can be installed poorly and be horribly inefficient. We should concentrate on better design of houses AND systems rather than saying install high efficient equipment. This is EXACTLY were the government went wrong with this whole thing. Not much different than fuel efficient cars. If you drive like a maniac you get poor mileage, I work with a guy that only gets 30 MPG in a daily driven Prius. He has a 2 position throttle, on and off. Standards aren't the problem, people are. You can't regulate stupid.

ChrisJ · February 2016

KC_Jones said:

njtommy said:

I wasn't really thinking about passive solar. But yeah that makes sense to me. I would imagine that if the house faced south you could install bigger windows (with in reason) and use tile floors to allow more heat gain.
My father, grandfather and I built something like this back in the early 90's. 24x24 addition on my grandparents house. All open, vaulted ceilings and HUGE windows, slab on grade that was insulated underneath (can't remember how much) with tile on top. 2x6 construction and insulated to the best available at the time. Also had a couple skylights on the most south portion of the roof. He had to put electric baseboard heaters in because of code requirements for heating, but he never turned them on. That room never got truly cold. I think the lowest he saw in 10 years might have been 65 or so. It works if it's laid out correctly. other than super insulating (which should be done no matter what) it doesn't cost anything extra. Concentrating on equipment is a bad distraction in my opinion. Any equipment can be installed poorly and be horribly inefficient. We should concentrate on better design of houses AND systems rather than saying install high efficient equipment. This is EXACTLY were the government went wrong with this whole thing. Not much different than fuel efficient cars. If you drive like a maniac you get poor mileage, I work with a guy that only gets 30 MPG in a daily driven Prius. He has a 2 position throttle, on and off. Standards aren't the problem, people are. You can't regulate stupid.

Maybe,
But cars have come a very long way regarding emissions and fuel consumption since the 1960s.

While a Ford model A can pull off 30MPG when driven right, it's terribly slow and has no A\C. My Sonic gets 40MPG fairly easy with the A\C on cruising at decent speeds. If you try hard, you can break 50MPG on a tank.

Government regulations helped cars and trucks tremendously IMO.

Imagine that co-worker of yours driving your 1970s Ford? What would he get, 12MPG driving like that?

njtommy · February 2016

Fuel efficiency what's that you speak of? lol

KC_Jones · February 2016

Chris you missed the point and your conclusion is incorrect if you talk to these types of people. Do you know why he drives like that? In his own words "because I can". He doesn't care how good of mileage he could get he cares that he can drive like a maniac and get better mileage. Also says that "in the old days" I couldn't drive like that because the cars got bad mileage. So on the old cars he drove more sensibly. I am not making this stuff up, this is the logic of people in the world.

ChrisJ · February 2016

KC_Jones said:
Chris you missed the point and your conclusion is incorrect if you talk to these types of people. Do you know why he drives like that? In his own words "because I can". He doesn't care how good of mileage he could get he cares that he can drive like a maniac and get better mileage. Also says that "in the old days" I couldn't drive like that because the cars got bad mileage. So on the old cars he drove more sensibly. I am not making this stuff up, this is the logic of people in the world.

People do the same thing with heating and cooling.
With drafty houses and lower efficiency equipment they ran the temperatures cooler in the winter, warmer in the summer. But now they don't because they can.

Didn't Dan post statistics a while back showing people are still spending the same money to heat and cool their homes as they did 30 years ago?

njtommy · February 2016

Like my one neighbor he has propane for heat and hot water. Mean while we have NG on the street. It would literally almost nothing to convert. The gas company runs the line to the house for free.

Fred · February 2016

It's probably a good thing that you guys are taking this thread off topic. I really don't know what the OP's motive is/was but nothing constructive is coming out of it (at least not that I can see). He says he's not affiliated with any manufacturer in the heating industry, yet he sites one Brand as the Gold Standard, he says he doesn't want to talk about technology, yet he brings every discussion back to technology, he says he wants to know why legislation lags behind technology, yet he wants to exclude any discussion on the politics of any and all legislation (I think he calls it "people's perception of a Conspiracy", to paraphrase him. he challenges everyone's input but seemingly expects everyone to believe him. His affiliations remain suspect to me. How long are you guys going to humor him? The OP needs to come clean with who he is and exactly what he is trying to accomplish. It may be believable, it may not.

njtommy · February 2016

@Fred. I think it's just something to talk about and bring up the subject that steam heat sucks and isn't efficient as hydronic or forced hot dust. Lol

Fred · February 2016

njtommy said:
@Fred. I think it's just something to talk about and bring up the subject that steam heat sucks and isn't efficient as hydronic or forced hot dust. Lol

OK, you must be on his payroll too. I won't believe you if you say otherwise!

ChrisJ · February 2016

njtommy said:
@Fred. I think it's just something to talk about and bring up the subject that steam heat sucks and isn't efficient as hydronic or forced hot dust. Lol

Steam is hydronic.
That's really getting annoying anymore...

njtommy · February 2016

Lol

Steam just hurts like hell when you brush up against it. Lol

ChrisJ · February 2016

njtommy said:
Lol

Steam just hurts like hell when you brush up against it. Lol

(Christopher Walken accent) You, must be, mature, when around, steam......

njtommy · February 2016

It's very hard to hold the those curse words back when working on steam. Lol

ChrisJ · February 2016

njtommy said:
It's very hard to hold the those curse words back when working on steam. Lol

Oh,
So when it comes to steam you're more of a Samuel L Jackson kind of guy.

njtommy · February 2016

Lol yes.

njtommy · February 2016

@ChrisJ

ChrisJ · February 2016

Chester · February 2016

ChrisJ said:

njtommy said:
I'm not sure how the solar panel thing works with pushing power back to the grid, but I can say they are being installed everywhere and on a good amount of houses. A good buddy of mine just had them install on his house I think it will cost him around 40k or so by the time he pays his system off.
From what I understand, they limit you to the amount you typically consume so the panels are intended to cancel out your energy bill. However, you often hear about selling power to the electric company, but they don't want you doing that. You can have a huge roof, but you're only allowed to install enough panels to primarily feed your own stuff.

There's also problems if a panel gets damaged, I believe they all need to be matched so if your panel is no longer made, tough noogies.

This is my understanding of it and it could be skewed.

Also not sure on what the environmental impact of making the panels is. I've heard it's terrible but don't know if I can believe that or not.

The economics of rooftop solar are kind of crazy.

Let's say you live in MA and your local utility is National Grid. As a residential ratepayer your all-in electricity cost is around $0.18/killowatt-hour. That includes the cost of energy (the wholesale cost of the actual electricity), plus transmission, distribution and a whole lot of societal costs such as low-income energy assistance, etc. that is embedded in your power bill.

MA law says that if you install rooftop solar the utility has to pay you the full retail rate for what you provide to the grid. So when the sun's shining and you're selling excess power to the grid they pay you $0.18/kwh.

Right now, the wholesale cost of power in New England is about $0.03/kwh. So the question is who's picking up the extra $0.15/kwh? The answer is that it shows up in everybody else's utility bills (and tax bills). How do you feel about paying your neighbors to put panels on their roofs?

It's hard to understand why the rest of us should be forced to pay 6 times the actual market cost of electricity. The region's grid is already pretty low carbon (half zero-carbon and half natural gas). The right way to do solar is to do a competitive RFP for utility-scale projects, where solar can compete at around $0.04/kwh.

SWEI · February 2016

Sounds like it came straight from the 2013 EEI position paper, which has now become the default position of pretty much every IOU in the country. Follow the money...

njtommy · February 2016

It's not a matter of what you said about steam. I just known Chris will defend steam systems till he is blue in the face. Hence we get steam memes.

Gordy · February 2016

Have any of you steam gurus ever given any thought about generating electricity with your boiler? Is it even feasible? At the cost of NG verses the cost of electricity today I'll bet it's cheaper than .12 cents a Kilowatt.

Tripping on NyQuil so excuse the wild thought.

Why are energy efficiency standards so far behind the technology?

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